Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind —

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I'm typing this in Daniel's room where Adam is currently packing for his trip to Texas, where he'll spend two months at an REU at Texas State. Earlier today we went to Minerva with him and Christine, then went to see X-Men: Apocalypse, which I enjoyed though didn't adore -- it has some lovely elements (Quicksilver, hero worship of Mystique, Charles and Erik never shutting up about each other despite attempts to give each a gratuitous heterosexual love interest) but most of the female characters spent a ridiculous amount of time waiting for men to tell them what to do and some aspects of the plot are just silly. Still, it's a huge improvement on The Last Stand!

We had dinner with my parents so they could see Adam -- Mom had Memorial Day "USA" cake -- then we came home and, while Adam did laundry, we all watched Hail Caesar which is now On Demand. I thought it might seem less interesting on a second viewing but it's funnier and some aspects seem more on target than the first time, plus after having recently been at Vasquez Rocks and taken the Warner Bros Studio Tour, it was really fun to see so many of the locations used in the film (the WB courthouse was still dressed for this movie when we were out there). Now he is packing, so I am posting these photos of animals from Annmarie Garden's festival last summer, some real, some art!

We spent most of Sunday in Hanover with Paul's parents, having brought up traditional Memorial Day picnic food (meat and veggie hot dogs, potato and macaroni salad, fruit, blueberry pie). After eating, we Skyped or telephoned a bunch of relatives. Our niece Maddy, Paul's middle brother's daughter, is coming to stay with us in July, so we talked to her, and briefly to her dad and my parents and older son.

Son's girlfriend came over when we got home, arriving while we were watching the Memorial Day Concert on PBS. Afterward, having discovered that she had never seen A Knight's Tale, we watched that and it remains pretty thoroughly a delight even if seeing Heath Ledger will always make me a little bit sad. Here are some photos from Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens last year that I'm only just getting around to posting:

Sunday, May 29, 2016

The words became librarians, custodians of peopleI looked for on the bridge.I forgot my own face.I read the book backwards, andI painted your name in lace(I drink only the milk of script as beer).I dislocate all gallery aesthetics,I carry keys for Baltimore andGo where no one is my name.I wish I could sculpt a healing streetfrom a blanket of guns. The way the sun dropsbehind a one-armed cop & we defaultto believing in voices. This is the trough of sleepwe draw from. Even gravity works at night.If I pull your speech on the carpet of impossibility,will you speak this immediate need for movement?The immediate need of not drowning in public?I will walk with the sharks of our pigmentsif that’s what inconclusive data requires,until we leave rooms that hold us apart. What you see as a small minority, I seeas closer to liberatory. Nothing comes from the centerthat doesn’t break most everything in parts. I break bread with the handwriting of words.Nothing of appearance is always an illusion.Lend me your book when you finishwriting it. I’ll be the first to fill in its spaces.

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Saturday was my father's birthday, so after a quiet morning of chores while Adam played tennis with him, we picked up my parents and went to see Money Monster. The events of the story become ludicrous in the last half hour, but it's well acted, Clooney and Roberts have terrific chemistry despite only appearing onscreen together in the first and last scenes, the direction and pacing are very engrossing, and there's a wide range of roles for women.

We took my parents to dinner at Not Your Average Joe's and went back to their house for the rest of the strawberry cake we had the night before. Then Christine, who is just home from the beach, met us at our house and we all watched Equilibrium since she hadn't seen it. As derivative and riddled with plot holes as it is, I never get tired of seeing Bale, Bean, Diggs, and Watson in it. Animals from Brookside Gardens a few weeks ago:

Saturday, May 28, 2016

The cool October night, and his tall gray hatthrows sharp shadows on the ground.Somewhere west of the black volcanoes,dogs are barking at something no one else can see.

His voice a white cloud,plumes of chimney smoke suspended in the dark.

Later we are dancing in the living room,his hand warm on the small of my back.It is music that doesn’t change.

The ground outside is frozen,trees glisten with moon frost.

The night is a careful abandonment of other voices,his girlfriend’s outburst brimming at the edge of the morning,

and I think I have aged so.His warm hands and my own laugh are all we share in this other lifestrung together by missing years and dry desert evenings.

Tomorrow the thin ice on black weeds will shimmer in the sun,and the horses wait for him.At his house around noon, thin strands of icicles dropto the ground in silence.

Early Saturday, the appaloosa runs free near Moenkopi.

The dog yips, yips alongside.

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Friday was the hottest day of the year so far, very humid -- not my favorite weather, though at least it was bright out. I spent the morning finishing up a review of Voyager's "Blood Fever", then we all watched Pan because Adam hadn't seen it. Hugh Jackman is fun to watch but otherwise the movie is riddled with faults. On top of a horribly miscast Rooney Mara, the kid in the title role is better than the guy playing Hook!

We had dinner with my parents, then came home and watched Windtalkers, which has one of Nicolas Cage's best performances though it's a really hard movie to watch -- extremely violent and quite a few WWII cliches, not to mention the Hollywood trope of focusing on white characters in a movie that should center on people of color, but still worth watching. Here from the Arlington Arts Center is Scott Pennington's Carnival Interior:

Friday, May 27, 2016

I was not; now I am—a few days henceI shall not be; I fain would look beforeAnd after, but can neither do; some PowerOr lack of power says “no” to all I would.I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.Whene’er, o’ercoming fear, I dare to move,I grope without direction and by chance.Some feign to hear a voice and feel a handThat draws them ever upward thro’ the gloom.But I—I hear no voice and touch no hand,Tho’ oft thro’ silence infinite I list,And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;Tho’ oft thro’ fateful darkness do I reach,And stretch my hand to find that other hand.I question of th’ eternal bending skiesThat seem to neighbor with the novice earth;But they roll on, and daily shut their eyesOn me, as I one day shall do on them,And tell me not the secret that I ask.

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After weeks of May being unseasonably cold, hot weather has arrived with a vengeance and on Thursday gave us a nearly 90 degree, code orange day. I spent a lot of it fighting with work -- I don't care how popular "Blood Fever" is with the P/T crowd, it's an atrocious episode that twice tries to justify sexual assault -- then Paul and I went to Kohl's to pick up the clothes I didn't buy yesterday because of their stupid coupon policy. They lost an additional $21 from me because I'd found a shirt I almost bought there for less online.

Adam had lunch with my mother and afternoon plans with friends, but he was here for dinner, and afterward we all watched Deadpool because he hadn't seen it although most of his friends had. Then he went to chat with Christine, who's at the beach, and we watched Orphan Black, which as always was engrossing and distressing and I can't even feel sorry for Rachel. Here are some older photos of Baltimore's Seven Foot Knoll Light, originally dating from 1855 and now in the Inner Harbor, including a view of Lady Maryland from an interior window:

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Because the road to our houseis a back road, meadowlands punctuatedby gravel quarry and lumberyard,there are unexpected travelerssome nights on our way home from work.Once, on the lawn of the Tool

and Die Company, a swan;the word doesn't convey the shockof the thing, white architecturerippling like a pond's rain-pocked skin,beak lifting to hiss at my approach.Magisterial, set down in elegant authority,

he let us know exactly how close we might come.After a week of long rainsthat filled the marsh until it pouredacross the road to make in low woodsa new heaven for toads,a snapping turtle lumbered down the center

of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet.His long tail dragged, blunt head jutting outof the lapidary prehistoric sleep of shell.We'd have lifted him from the roadbut thought he might bend his long neck backto snap. I tried herding him; he rushed,

though we didn't think those blocky legscould hurry-- then ambled backto the center of the road, a targetfor kids who'd delight in the crushof something slow with the lookof primeval invulnerability. He turned

the blunt spear point of his jaws,puffing his undermouth like a bullfrog,and snapped at your shoe,vising a beakful of-- thank God--leather. You had to shake him loose. We left himto his own devices, talked on the way home

of what must lead him to new marshor old home ground. The next day you saw,one town over, remains of shellin front of the little liquor store. I arguedit was too far from where we'd seen him,too small to be his... though who could tell

what the day's heat might have takenfrom his body. For days he became a stain,a blotch that could have been merelyoil. I did not want to believe thatwas what we saw alive in the firm centerof his authority and right

to walk the center of the road,head up like a missionary moving certainlyinto the country of his hopes.In the movies in this small townI stopped for popcorn while you went aheadto claim seats. When I entered the cool dark

I saw straight couples everywhere,no single silhouette who might be you.I walked those two aisles too smallto lose anyone and thought of a bookI read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science,"in which a man simply walked away,

at a picnic, and was,in the act of striding forwardto examine a flower, gone.By the time the previews endedI was nearly in tears-- then realizedthe head of one-half the couple in the first row

was only your leather jacket propped in the seatthat would be mine. I don't think I rememberanything of the first half of the movie.I don't know what happened to the swan. I readevery week of some man's lover showingthe first symptoms, the night sweat

or casual flu, and then the wasting beginsand the disappearance a day at a time.I don't know what happened to the swan;I don't know if the stain on the streetwas our turtle or some other. I don't knowwhere these things we meet and know briefly,

as well as we can or they will let us,go. I only know that I do not want you--you with your white and muscular wingsthat rise and ripple beneath or above me,your magnificent neck, eyes the deep mottled autumnal colorsof polished tortoise-- I do not want you ever to die.

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It was actually hot on Wednesday! My morning was mostly work, which included watching Voyager's "Blood Fever" -- an episode a lot of people like because it gets Paris and Torres together, and I despise because I can't get past the casual date rape themes -- then after lunch Adam and I went to Kohl's and Target to get him bathing suits and stuff for his weeks working in Texas, though I have to go back to Kohl's to pick up the stuff there tomorrow because my %$@#& coupon isn't good until then.

Adam had plans with friends after dinner so we had our meatloaf and scalloped potatoes (two of his favorites) on the early side. Then he went out while we watched the Arrow season finale (too little Barrowman, too much violence) and the Nashville series finale (nearly every storyline wrapped up neatly, in most cases by vilifying one woman so another could have her redemption; the only storyline I cared about was Will's, and that, at least, ended well). Here's Lake Whetstone during gosling season:

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Exactly four different men have triedto teach me how to play. I could nevertell the difference between a rookor bishop, but I knew the horse meant

knight. And that made sense to me,because a horse is night: soot-hoofand nostril, dark as a sabled eveningwith no stars, bats, or moon blooms.

It’s a night in Ohio where a man sleepsalone one week and the next, the womanhe will eventually marry leans her bodyinto his for the first time, leans a kind

of faith, too—filled with white cricketsand bouquets of wild carrot. Andthe months and the honeyed yearsafter that will make all the light

and dark squares feel like tilesfor a kitchen they can one day buildtogether. Every turn, every sacrificialmove—all the decoys, the castling,

the deflections—these will be bothriotous and unruly, the exact oppositeof what she thought she ever wantedin the endgame of her days.

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Wednesday actually felt like May! It was nearly 80 degrees and the sun was out all afternoon! I had a pretty dull morning doing work and sweeping all the wet leaves off the deck and front porch so they could get dry while Adam was out enjoying the weather with friends. But in the afternoon, when Paul had finished working, we all went to take a walk along the C&O Canal, where the snakes were hiding but the turtles, frogs, herons, and fish were not. Afterward we stopped at the Bethesda Co-op for fruit, sesame sticks, and goat cheese, then had Gorgonzola and garlic ravioli for dinner.

Then those of us who watch The Flash watched the season finale, which Adam tells me suggests that next season they'll be doing The Flashpoint Paradox, which I haven't seen but I hope it doesn't drag as long as the Zoom storyline has. Then we all watched Pawn Sacrifice, which is amazingly gripping -- I knew most of what was going to happen, and I know Fischer was mentally ill but still an awful person, and I found it utterly gripping anyway. My one complaint is that there's not enough explanation of just what was so radical about his chess-playing, which would be much more relevant than how he lost his virginity.